POLITICS-US:
How Neo-Cons Sabotaged Iran's Help on al Qaeda
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32249
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (IPS) - The United States and
Iran were on a course to work closely together on
the war against al Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors
in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002 -- until
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped in to
scuttle that cooperation, according to officials
who were involved at the time.
After the Sep. 11 attacks, U.S. officials
responsible for preparing for war in Afghanistan
needed Iran's help to unseat the Taliban and
establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had
organised resistance by the "Northern Alliance" and
had provided arms and funding, at a time when the
United States had been unwilling to do so.
"The Iranians had real contacts with important
players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use
their influence in constructive ways in coordination
with the United States," recalls Flynt Leverett,
then senior director for Middle East affairs in the
National Security Council (NSC), in an interview
with IPS.
In October 2001, as the United States was just
beginning its military operations in Afghanistan,
State Department and NSC officials began meeting
secretly with Iranian diplomats in Paris and Geneva,
under the sponsorship of Lakhdar Brahimi, head of
the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
Leverett says these discussions focused on "how to
effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban
was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government".
It was thanks to the Northern Alliance Afghan
troops, which were supported primarily by the
Iranians, that the Taliban was driven out of Kabul
in mid-November. Two weeks later, the Afghan
opposition groups were convened in Bonn under
United Nations auspices to agree on a successor
regime.
At that meeting, the Northern Alliance was demanding
60 percent of the portfolios in an interim
government, which was blocking agreement by other
opposition groups. According to U.S. special envoy
to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Iran played a
"decisive role" in persuading the Northern Alliance
delegate to compromise. Dobbins also recalls how
the Iranians insisted on including language in the
Bonn agreement on the war on terrorism.
The bureaucracy recognised that there was an
opportunity to work with Iran not only on
stabilising Afghanistan but on al Qaeda as well. As
reported by the Washington Post on Oct. 22, 2004,
the State Department's policy planning staff had
written a paper in late November 2001 suggesting
that the United States should propose more formal
arrangements for cooperation with Iran on fighting
al Qaeda.
That would have involved exchanging intelligence
information with Tehran as well as coordinating
border sweeps to capture al Qaeda fighters and
leaders who were already beginning to move across
the border into Pakistan and Iran. The CIA agreed
with the proposal, according to the Post's sources,
as did the head of the White House Office for
Combating Terrorism, Ret. Gen. Wayne A. Downing.
But the cooperation against al Qaeda was not the
priority for the anti-Iranian interests in the
White House and the Pentagon. Investigative
journalist Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack"
recounts that Deputy National Security Advisor
Stephen J. Hadley, who chaired an inter-agency
committee on Iran policy dealing with issues
surrounding Afghanistan, learned that the White
House intended to include Iran as a member of the
"Axis of Evil" in Bush's State of the Union message
in January.
Hadley expressed reservations about that plan at
one point, but was told by Bush directly that Iran
had to stay in. By the end of December, Hadley had
decided, against the recommendations of the State
Department, CIA and White House counter-terrorism
office, that the United States would not share any
information with Iran on al Qaeda, even though it
would press the Iranians for such intelligence, as
well as to turn over any al Qaeda members it
captured to the appropriate home country.
Soon after that decision, hardliners presented
Iranian policy to Bush and the public as hostile to
U.S. aims in Afghanistan and refusing to cooperate
with the war on terror -- the opposite of what
officials directly involved had witnessed.
On Jan. 11, 2002, the New York Times quoted Pentagon
and intelligence officials as saying that Iran had
given "safe haven" to fleeing al Qaeda fighters in
order to use them against the United States in
post-Taliban Afghanistan. That same day, Bush
declared "Iran must be a contributor in the war
against terror."
"Our nation, in our fight against terrorism, will
uphold the doctrine of 'either you're with us or
against us'," he said.
Officials who were familiar with the intelligence
at that point agree that the "safe haven for al
Qaeda" charge was not based on any genuine analysis
by the intelligence community.
"I wasn't aware of any intelligence support that
charge," recalls Dobbins, who was still the primary
point of contact with Iranian officials about
cooperation on Afghanistan. "I certainly would have
seen it had there been any such intelligence.
Nobody told me they were harbouring al Qaeda."
Iran had already increased its troop strength on
the Afghan border in response to U.S. requests. As
the Washington Post reported in 2004, Iranian Deputy
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif brought a dossier to
U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan in early February
with the photos of 290 men believed to be al Qaeda
members who already been detained fleeing from
Afghanistan.
Later hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees
were repatriated to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and
other Arab and European countries, according to news
reports.
The hardliners would complain that the Iranians did
not turn over any top al Qaeda leaders. But the
United States had just rejected any exchange of
information with the very officials with whom it
needed to discuss the question of al Qaeda -- the
Iranian intelligence and security ministry.
The same administration officials told the Times
that Iran was seeking to exert its influence in
border regions in western Afghanistan by shipping
arms to its Afghan allies in the war against the
Taliban and that this could undermine the interim
government and Washington's long-term interests in
Afghanistan.
But in March 2002, Iranian official met with Dobbins
in Geneva during a U.N. conference on Afghanistan's
security needs. Dobbins recalls that the Iranian
delegation brought with it the general who had been
responsible for military assistance to the Northern
Alliance during the long fight against the Taliban.
The general offered to provide training, uniforms,
equipment and barracks for as many as 20,000 new
recruits for the nascent Afghan military. All this
was to be done under U.S. leadership, Dobbins
recalls, not as part of a separate programme under
exclusive Iranian control.
"The Iranians later confirmed that they did this as
a gesture to the United States," says Dobbins.
Dobbins returned to Washington to inform key
administration officials of what he regarded as an
opportunity for a new level of cooperation in
Afghanistan. He briefed then Secretary of State
Colin Powell, National Adviser Condoleezza Rice and
Rumsfeld personally. "To my knowledge, there was
never a response," he says.
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security
policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War
in Vietnam", was published in June 2005. (END/2006)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32249
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
--
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer
University of Chicago - Department of Political Science
Stephen M. Walt
Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
( has polemical response from Alan Dershowitz at site )
Edited non-PDF version :
http://www.lrb.co.uk./v28/n06/mear01_.html
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